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Ending Poverty Through Empowerment

UNA-USA Nationwide Conference Call

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Find out how helping the poor help themselves is furthering progress in the fight against poverty. Join UNA-USA Tuesday, November 13 at 4:30 p.m. ET for our Nationwide Conference Call with discussion and Q&A “Ending Poverty Through Empowerment" with Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus.

Muhammad Yunus is a member of the Board of Directors at the United Nations Foundation and is responsible for many innovative programs benefiting the rural poor. He is founder of the Grameen Movement and winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. His establishment of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh was fueled by the belief that credit is a fundamental human right. His objective was to help the poor escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them, and by teaching them sound financial principles so they could help themselves. From 1993-1995, Yunus was a member of the International Advisory Group for the Fourth World Conference on Women, a post to which he was appointed by the UN Secretary-General. He has served on the Global Commission of Women's Health, the Advisory Council for Sustainable Economic Development, and the UN Expert Group on Women and Finance. He attended Vanderbilt University on a Fulbright Scholarship and received his Ph.D. in Economics in 1969. He taught briefly in the U.S. before returning to Bangladesh, where he joined the Economics Department at Chittagong University.

Kathy Calvin is the Chief Executive Officer of the United Nations Foundation. Her career has spanned work in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. In her current role as CEO of the UN Foundation, she leads one of the most innovative organizations advocating for the UN and the creation of public-private partnerships. Her leadership brings together the largest network of supporters of UN issues in the United States and a global network of corporate, civil society and media partners. In 2011, Calvin was named one of Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Rock the World,” and in 2012, she was listed in Fast Company’s “League of Extraordinary Women.” Prior to joining the UN Foundation as Chief Operating Officer in 2003, Calvin served as President of the AOL Time Warner Foundation where she guided AOL Time Warner's philanthropic activities and was the chief architect of the company's corporate responsibility initiatives.